Page 33 of The Vigilante's Lover

The donut shop is silent and still when Sam pulls up.

“I’ll buzz you when I have the heat detectors down,” he says. “Then you can stroll on in.”

I watch him as he crosses the lot and deactivates the door locks. He pauses by a plastic bin and peers inside, extracting a bear claw from beneath a sign that says “Day-old pastries.”

That Sam.

He disappears through swinging doors behind the counter.

This part of town is quiet and dark. It’s a poor section, judging by the sagging facades of the buildings, and the asphalt outside the car is cracked and broken.

This donut shop isn’t a chain, but some mom-and-pop shop.

Probably retired Vigilantes who wanted a small business.

Since they’re covering for an outpost, they don’t even have to turn a profit.

Just make their pastries and work whatever hours suit them.

Easy life.

Not for me. But easy.

The screen on the dash lights up. Sam’s face appears. “Come on in, boss. Don’t forget to activate the clone ID.”

I click on the key chain that bears the electronic signature of a young man whose Vigilante status is pending. The records will show him coming into service about 24 hours earlier than he is actually activated, but this window allows me to come into an outpost without incident.

I enter the door and am hit with the powerful scent of sugar. Working with Sam is always a trial of fighting junk food. Once he officially hit Phase Ten as a tech guy, he was eligible to skip ongoing military training. And he did. Best day of his life, he claims.

I prefer to stay in solid fighting shape, regardless of my class.

Just beyond the swinging doors is a pantry. Inside it is an elevator.

This must be the way.

Like most Vigilante elevators, there are no buttons. If you get in at the top, you get out at the bottom. It’s a steel trap with no emergency exits. Most are equipped with gas jets as well, whatever poison the Vigilantes want to give you, nerve or sleeping or laughing or death.

The car stops and the doors slide open. Sam is hunched over a keyboard connected to six older-model screens.

No slick glass displays here. Not surprising, since it’s a storage for backups.

The room is bare, just concrete walls lined with wires that lead to this main console.

Off to one side are metal cabinets that house more backup units. Still, there will be hidden security.

“Klaus is gone from the system like you said,” Sam says, munching on the pastry as he scrolls through code. “He exited six months ago with his death at the safe house.”

“What about before?” I drop onto a stool next to Sam.

“I pulled the backups. It’s all the stuff we know. You nabbed him from the German syndicate. Lots of our exploits in Vegas. Your move to the West Coast syndicate and hiring him on.”

“What about the night I killed Singer? He was there.”

“Nothing in the system or on backup.”

“Jovana?”

Sam taps at the keys. “Still has the special status she had when you were with her. No records.”

Damn. “Look up anything else that might have been deleted the day Klaus was reported dead.”

Sam wipes the back of his hand across his mouth. “Killer pastries here,” he says as he types. “Okay, so there is some deleted security footage in the head syndicate. A meeting. Klaus was in the room. Sutherland. And a special.”

“Jovana,” I say.

“I’d bet on it,” Sam says. “This is where they planned Klaus’s disappearance. The timeline is right.”

“Sutherland is in on it.”

“This is bad, dude.” Sam glances around at the corners of the room. “Glad this is an old outpost. We’d be dead already if we were monitored.”

“Can you trace a special even if she doesn’t have a name?”

“Sure, they still have IDs.” Sam’s voice is strained. “This is all we should do, Jax. Now that we know how high it goes, we have to kill this query.”

I nod. “Let’s just check that one thing.”

He taps, but his expression is grim. “Here we go. That special pops up in an altercation at an MMA fight in Vegas three months ago. Doesn’t say what. But I have the date and location. Apparently there was a bit of a tiff over compromised security. Footage went viral of a couple fighting.”

I lean in and note the information. “I have friends in Vegas still.”

“I remember those days,” Sam says. He powers the computers down. “We were always getting mixed up with the illegal MMA fights there.”

“Fun times,” I say.

We head back to the elevator. Sam watches the corners anxiously, and I know he’s thinking about the gas.

When we’re back out in the parking lot, he says, “You know I can’t do a damn thing now that we know this goes to the top.”

“I know it,” I say. “I need to be the only dead man walking.”

He claps me on the back. “Good luck, man.”

I stride back to the Vigilante car. Sam looks forlorn, like he’s never going to see me again.

He should know better. Nothing’s gotten to me yet.